Conveyancing fee charges - Help to Buy - Leashold - Increase from quote

frullani

Hi all,
I am in the process of buying a house as first time buyer. My conveyancer in the first quote charged me £2142.

Legal fee £675.00

Leasehold fee £195.00

Mortgage fee £75.00

Stamp Duty Land Tax fee £95.00

Search Pack £275.00

Land Registry fee £540.00

Land Registry Searches £20.00

VAT on Lawyer's Fees and Searches £267.00 

During the process we arrived at £3.215,05! They added a lot of fees and increased the search pack fees:
Local and Other Searches £324
Official Searches £24
Money Laundering Check £38.40
Notice Fee - Charge £90
Engrossment Fee Payable to Developers Lawyer £150
Archive Charge £29
VAT there on £5.80

Land Registry fee £540.00

Indemnity Policy Premium £36
Chancel Search Indemnity Insurance £5.25
Legal Fee £675

Leasehold fee £195.00

Mortgage fee £75.00

Stamp Duty Land Tax fee £95.00
Arranging Indemnity £70
Verification Lawyer Fee £7.50
Temporary Exeptional Market Fee £45
GIfted Deposit Fee £120
Fraud Protection Fee £75
VAT on our fees £271.50
Fraud transfer Fee £39
Land Tax Funds Transfer Fee £39
VAT there-on £15.60
Help to buy fees £250

Is this reasonable? I am buying as first time buyer, a leasehold property in a new build?
Has anyone bought a similar property and how much they have been charged?
Is there a limit in how much the conveyancer can increase their initial quote?

Thank you all!

mcpitman

What was the wording on the quote and what extra things did you come across during the process that needed addressing.

user1977

The engrossment fee is a fee charged by the builders, nothing to do with your solicitor, so that's not relevant for a start.

Gifted deposit (and possibly some of the related costs) - was it known that would be involved at the time of the original quote?

Notice fee - I'm guessing this has arisen because of a requirement in the titles, so wouldn't have been known at the time of the quote. Same for the chancel search

Help to Buy fee - again, did they know that would be involved when they quoted?

Indemnity fee - don't know what this specifically is for but not something you can foresee before the transaction starts.

Funds transfer fees - should all be predictable rather than a surprise.

"temporary exceptional market fee" - is this just a "we're very busy" surcharge?!

Archive fee - shouldn't be a surprise either (sounds like they're just charging you for not deleting your file after completion, even though they're not allowed to that anyway...)

frullani

user1977 said:

The engrossment fee is a fee charged by the builders, nothing to do with your solicitor, so that's not relevant for a start.

Gifted deposit (and possibly some of the related costs) - was it known that would be involved at the time of the original quote?

Notice fee - I'm guessing this has arisen because of a requirement in the titles, so wouldn't have been known at the time of the quote. Same for the chancel search

Help to Buy fee - again, did they know that would be involved when they quoted?

Indemnity fee - don't know what this specifically is for but not something you can foresee before the transaction starts.

Funds transfer fees - should all be predictable rather than a surprise.

"temporary exceptional market fee" - is this just a "we're very busy" surcharge?!

Archive fee - shouldn't be a surprise either (sounds like they're just charging you for not deleting your file after completion, even though they're not allowed to that anyway...)

Yes we alredy provided the information about the gift/help to buy/Funds transfer.
And yes temporary exceptional market fee they justify because they are busy, which to me sound ridicolous, but I don't know how to fight back all of this increase.
I was expecting an increase, but they should have been included the majority of these fees since the beginning.
I am unsure in how to proceed

frullani

mcpitman said:

What was the wording on the quote and what extra things did you come across during the process that needed addressing.

My main concern is that we provided all the information initially therefore the majority of these additional fees should have been included. Therefore I feel that is unfair quoting something and then suddenly adding fees that should have been mentioned since the beginning. Also an increase of more than £1000 from an initial quote of £2000ish sounds a lot to me.

mcpitman

I understand where you are coming from.

I know from experience that any costs not explicitly mentioned in the quote will be additional and often wording is there somewhere to that tune, learnt by my own naivety.

Any chance this is one of the big firms and you received a generic quote from the website with wording to say "may change based on circumstances" somewhere?

TBG01

Sounds like a conveyancing factory.

Entice you in with low quotes and then add on stuff that would be included in the quotes from elsewhere, which were deemed too high at the time.

frullani

mcpitman said:

I understand where you are coming from.

I know from experience that any costs not explicitly mentioned in the quote will be additional and often wording is there somewhere to that tune, learnt by my own naivety.

Any chance this is one of the big firms and you received a generic quote from the website with wording to say "may change based on circumstances" somewhere?

They have in their Terms and Conditions that they could add more expenses. But I would never expect would be so much. They were also advised by my mortgage advisor who was surprised when I told them how much thye increased the fees.
I feel that now would be complicated switch to another conveynancer (exchange should happen in a few weeks), also not knowing if this would make me save some money.

TBG01

You might save some money but you'll go back to start of the transaction. 

mcpitman

So you received a quote that stipulated the price may go up and it has. No surprises there.

Looks like you generated a quote for a "standard" leasehold transaction, where in reality yours is a new build leasehold transaction using HTB during a Stamp Duty relief window.

The other thing to note is that the quote was for the generic work to be completed, not the costs of somethings you have incurred, which naturally the costs will get passed to you for things like optional indemnity policies etc.

I don't see much wrong (apart from the hike in costs and potential lack of awareness of charges) and assume you have agreed to all the indemnity policies and therefore these charges etc.

Have you rung or emailed them to discuss the quote vs reality costs?

Justonemorecupoftea

Some of those added extras like search fees are standard and should really have been quoted at the start.

Also, why are you paying for indemnity insurance? I thought sellers generally paid for that.